THE GOVERNOR’S GALLERY
Pavilion Office Building, 5th floor
109 State Street
Montpelier, Vermont

“IN  THE  ABSTRACT”
VISIONS CREATED ENTIRELY THROUGH THE LENS
Show Dates:  April 5–May 31,  2011
Gallery Hours:   Monday through Friday   8:30 a.m. -­‐ 4:30p.m.

OPENING RECEPTION:

Thursday, April 14, 3-­‐5p.m.
All attendees will receive a small photo gift from the artist.

Photo ID required at all times for admission (gov’t security)

“Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera – Compact or SLR”

Sponsored by *BDIC  at UMass-Amherst

Instructor:  Annie Tiberio Cameron    Sunday October 17, 2010

10am – 3pm      Herter 106  (on the UMass Campus in Amherst, MA)

UMass Students: $20     Non-Students: $40

Pre-registration required by emailing Dan Gordon:  dgordon@history.umass.edu (or by calling BDIC  @ 413-545-2504)

Questions about content:  Contact Annie – 802-223-2204  or  annie@AnnieCameronPhotography.com

NOTE:This one-day workshop is a preview of a 3-credit course to be offered by Annie through BDIC and UMass Continuing Education in Spring,2011 entitled:  “Digital Photography for the Non-Art Major.” There are no pre-requisites for this course other than owning a camera (other than a cell phone camera.) If your major would benefit from proper, skilled use of a digital camera (compact or SLR) consider taking the full course.  Goals of the course are:

-learning the parts and operation of your digital cameras on auto and manual

-understanding digital concepts (file formats, white balance, resolution, etc.)

-understanding exposure (f-stop and shutter speed)

-understanding focal lengths and their relationship to images

-learning basic compositional concepts

-practicing learned concepts with your camera

-shooting assignments with and without instructor

-critique sessions

October Workshop Summary:

If the buttons and dials on your digital camera confound you, this workshop can help decode these little computers with lenses.   Learn the basic features that make digital cameras tick, understand those new or confusing terms such as resolution, memory cards, optical & digital viewfinders, file formats, white balance, and more.  Come learn the basic tips in simple language, supported with comprehensive handouts.

No prior knowledge is required.  Information is applicable to point-and-shoot or SLR digital cameras, but not cell phone cameras.  You will need to bring along your cameras and their instruction manuals.  The goal of this basic workshop is to get the most from your camera by learning to understand and lean on the manual that came with it.

Workshop includes an indoor learning session, a walking campus field session, and a return to the classroom to review and gently critique the results of the field work.   Proficiency with composition is not a factor; understanding how to use the camera is the goal.  We’ll break for lunch just before heading into the field.  Annie will be available to answer individual questions during lunch.  Workshop is rain or shine.  If rain, we’ll shoot indoors.  Dress properly for outdoor temps.

What to Bring:

Digital Camera  (compact or SLR)

Instruction Manual

Charged batteries for duration of class

Pen/notebook for notetaking

Lunch, water, snacks as needed

Optional:  laptop

About the Instructor:

Annie Tiberio Cameron is a fine art nature photographer with a special emphasis on teaching. She brings to this workshop over thirty-two years of teaching: elementary school, coordinating environmental education programs for Massachusetts Audubon Society, and photography for the National Wildlife Federation, UMass Continuing Education, Bay Path College and many other institutions.  Her photos have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the country, received awards and have been published in numerous calendars, magazines, newspapers, and other publications, including two editions of a top-selling Sierra Club book entitled: Mother Earth — Through the Eyes of Women Photographers and Writers, as well as its accompanying postcard book.  Annie also tours a narrated photographic slide adventure entitled “Death Valley, Okefinokee and Beyond,” a retrospective of 15 years of Annie’s solo wilderness travel to wild and remote places to photograph.

Annie is a UMass grad with a BS-BDIC degree in Elementary Environmental Education, ’73.   Her specialty is teaching photography to beginners and helping them gain a comfort level with their cameras so skill advancement becomes possible.   Her website contains many more details about her teaching background and includes a gallery of her work.

*BDIC = Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration:  a concentration at UMass where students design their own unique, interdisciplinary major.

Busy summer, but they all are.  I’m blogging about my current activitybecause it’s relevant since it’s still happening. I’m in the middle of a week on Martha’s Vineyard, MA, spending time trying to catch some good light and to relax.  Sometimes those two things are mutually exclusive.   Very hot, sitting on porch of B & B and listening to a DJ on the beach right in front of me — pretty nice.   Yesterday we had the quintessential beach experience out o Aquinnah, formerly known as Gay Head, the center of the Wampanoag Nation.  I love the history of this island.  The famous red clay cliffs were at their finest, and the gentle waves lulled us with our yummy snacks and wine.  It’s quite a hike to get out there, but well worth it.  We were the totally last folks on the beach and sadly made our way out in near darkness.  Almost a spiritual experience.   Atached are a few images from my photographic efforts this week.  I’m trying a new technique of dream-like beach portraits.  Have to make hay while the sun shines because Hurricane Earl is on the way!

In case you don’t know me, I’ll parcel out some factoids in scattered posts about me in no special order.

I have 2 kids, Adam and Jenny.  Adam is 27, living and working in NYC.  With a Summa Cum Laude in English, he is head meat cutter at Dicksons Farmstand Meats www.dicksonsfarmstand.com in Chelsea Market.  www.chelseamarket.com He currently writes about meat on Mark Bittman’s blog. www.markbittman.com

Jenny is 23 and graduating from McGill University in Montréal with honors next week.  Major: International Development, Minor:  African Studies.  This fall she heads to Columbia University in NYC for a Masters in Public Health with a Global Health concentration.   She’s spending her last summer in Montréal, working at Dundees Bar & Grill, playing Ultimate Frisbee and volunteering at Amandla, a radio program focused on African news and current affairs.

Here’s a post about my early photographic and camera-ownership history.  I had at least one camera at a time throughout my whole life.  First one was a small Kodak Brownie that accompanied me to camp, school, and everywhere.  From that period, there are negatives, black & white prints and photo albums floating around in boxes somewhere in the house.  Recently, my sister gave me a vintage Kodak Brownie as an Xmas present that I display on a book shelf.  My next cameras weren’t anything special; probably the little 1960s compact cameras that everyone had and that used flash cubes.  (Remember those?)

As a freshman in college in 1969, I bought a Hanimex Practika, my first SLR.  Discovering its shortcomings caused me to trade it in for a Pentax Spotmatic, which I have today in working condition!  That’s the older version of the Pentax K-1000 which was around until the last few years before digital took over.  From there, I went to my last film camera, a Canon F-1, which lasted me from probably the mid-1980s through 2006.  Quite a work horse.

I got my first digital camera around 2004, a rangefinder called an Olympus Camedia 5060, on which I learned to navigate my way around the digital world sufficiently to know I was destined to join the digital camera movement.  Since I have had two Canon digital SLRs – the 5D and the new 5D Mark II.  I’m a satisfied convert for the most part, but there will never be anything like a projector lamp shining through a piece of slide emulsion.

More thoughts next time.

I’m starting my blogging adventure on Thursday May 20, 2010.  I haven’t read many blogs so it’s hard to know what you guys out there may want to read about.  Sometimes I’ll write about developing ideas for creating images, sometimes I’ll write about the other more boring stuff I have to do to keep getting my work out there..  But if you find this, subscribe to my blog and tell me what you want to hear about!

I have to give credit where credit’s due… my daughter, Jenny, has been 110% instrumental in helping me join the 21st century, with regard to setting up this blog, my Facebook page, and doing much of the donkey work to get dozens of my images formatted and ready for my new website.  I’ll talk more about my web designer in another post.